Trans Literature

Undergraduate

What is trans literature? This first year seminar takes up this deceptively simple question to consider the relationships between transgender life and literature, and between social identities and literary aesthetics more broadly. How do we define trans literature? Is the term a way of designating works by trans authors, or works about trans people, or works for trans readers—all of the above, or something else besides? We consider the historical conditions of possibility for trans self-narration and the constraints on the forms, genres, and modes of writing with which trans people have contended in the struggle to establish themselves as the authors of their own stories. We consider the historical emergence of a literary publishing category called “trans literature” in the context of theories of minoritized subject positions and minority literatures more broadly. We read trans theory, memoir, poetry, novels, and short stories, both historical and contemporary; possible authors include Red Jordan Arobateau, Susan Stryker, Trish Salah, Torrey Peters, Leslie Feinberg, Cecilia Gentili, Juliana Huxtable, Torrin Greathouse, Megan Milks, Grace Byron, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Jordy Rosenberg, Shola von Reinhold, and others. Students in the class will choose the final reading. Enrollment limited to first-year students. HU TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm